Today is my last day of eleven years serving Congregation Beth Israel as its rabbi, so I'm in a rather reflective mood. I am thinking today about the nature or rabbis and the odd relationships they have with the communities they serve. Here is just a random assortment of Ten Thoughts About Being a Congregational Rabbi:

1) As rabbi, you attend community events because being part of a Jewish community is one of the greatest joys of your life—but also because it's your job. Members of the community sometimes feel uncertainty about this duality. Is s/he our rabbi because s/he loves us, or because we pay her/him? For congregants who are anxious about their relationships with parent-like figures, the tension can be painful as they seek reassurance that the emotional connection is genuine and not just professional. You just live with that.

2) Being a rabbi is a lot like being a community organizer. The main point of your job is not to do things yourself (except writing the odd sermon or teaching the confirmation class). Your most important job is to collaborate with others and give them the pleasure of succeeding for themselves. It means that you accept a lot of blame but don't take a lot of credit. You learn humility. You learn to derive satisfaction from helping other people to feel good about themselves.

3) As a rabbi, you are present at some of the most powerful moments of other people's lives. I remember visiting a mother in the hospital just an hour after her child was born. I saw her staring into the baby's eyes with such love, I felt like someone who had just stumbled into the presence of a couple's passion. I also remember being in a nursing home room when a man was saying goodbye to his wife of fifty years for the last time, weeping and declaring his love. The truth is—as difficult as it is to remember at such moments—people want the rabbi to be there. They want your presence to be a token of the fact that something powerfully meaningful is happening. Through your eyes, they want the universe to witness their pain, joy, spirit and existence. If you're good at what you do, you will resist the temptation to try to say something meaningful at that moment. Just be.

4) People assume that you have a lot of power in the congregation. They think that you get to decide all the important questions. The truth is, the only power you have is the authority you earn by being a decent human being and by helping people in the way that they actually want to be helped. Rabbis who say "No" a lot, and think that it demonstrates their power, are not usually successful.

5) Rabbis should be allowed to be spouses to their spouses and parents to their children in full view of the congregation. If you try to keep those roles separate from the role of rabbi, you lose the ability to teach your greatest lessons about living a life of Torah.

6) When you're the rabbi, it's your job to tell the people who pay you that they are being ganifs when they are being ganifs. Also, you have to do this with great love and compassion. If you don't, you should be fired. Is there any other job like that?

7) You go through five years of rabbinic school, in which you are trained to be knowledgeable about the intricacies of Hebrew grammar, the underlying structure of talmudic discourse, the historical context of the biblical text, and the nuances of the philosophies of Saadia Gaon, the Rambam, Buber and Heschel. Then you enter a congregation in which you teach adults their alef-bet and Bible stories. You breathe deeply. You smile. You appreciate the fact that it is all Torah and it is all holy. You love them deeply.

8) You never stop becoming a rabbi.

9) Your job is not to teach facts, beliefs or practices. Your job is to be the conduit through which other people fall in love with Torah. You must do this without them knowing it. You must make them believe that they are learning facts, beliefs and practices when, in fact, they are learning to become themselves.

10) It is not up to you to finish the job. However, neither are you free to desist from hearing people's stories, holding the hands of people in pain, shouting for joy at every wedding and bar mitzvah, striving toward God with every prayer (even when you're leading the service), feeling the loss experienced by every mourner, fighting like hell for justice, making every child feel great about being Jewish, learning more Torah, helping a community find its voice, hoping for the future, living with the past, accepting failure, saying you're sorry, returning to the place where you began, saying goodbye, and saying hello.

This is a terrific and insightful post. Our rabbi of 22 years, Steve Chester, just retired yesterday and I suspect he would agree with just about everything you say. (I have a sort-of farewell interview with him at http://midlifebatmitzvah.wordpress.com/2011/05/31/in-conversation-rabbi-steven-chester/.)

What struck me recently was how strange it was to have a rabbi "retire." I mean -- the other people who are deeply meaningful in your life, your parents or uncle or mentor -- don't just stop one day. And in the olden days, those famous Chasidic rebbes seemed to keep dispersing wisdom to their disciples until the moment they died.

I think that gets to your point about how congregations feel this duality about their rabbi -- does s/he really love me, or is it just because we are paying him/her? That helped put my thoughts in context.

Good luck with your new congregation! Where are they? They are lucky to have you!

I got a question about the word "ganif" in number 6, above. The word is Yiddish and, literally, it means "thief." However, Yiddish is a particularly poetic language and words mean more than they mean. A ganif is also someone who doesn't do what he should and does what he shouldn't. Think of it as the opposite of "mensch" (which, by the way, literally means "man," but we know that it means much more).

I guess my point is just that a rabbi's job is to answer to an authority beyond the people who sign the paychecks. Rabbis who just do what the congregation asks them to do are not doing their job right.

Holy wow. This is an amazing post. I think I should print this out and tack it to my wall and reread it regularly.

I wish you every blessing. Dear Temple Beit HaYam: I hope y'all know how blessed you are!

Roseann Conrad

7/2/2011 03:09:27 am

Reb Jeff, great post. As a member of Temple Beit HaYam, I am looking forward to your arrival. I believe from everything I have read/heard you will be greatly missed by your congregation. I for one am very excited that you are coming here and I look forward to learning from your interpretation of torah and also by the inspiration you will provide.

Susan Le Gresley

7/2/2011 07:40:44 am

Many Blessings for the ending and beginning,the journey and arrival.I wonder how you will revisit this discourse in 10 years. Seems a structured pairing in the first five Commandments.Very profound,meaningful,and revealing of an open heart.Hope you still have time to do the blog.It's very thought provoking.I found myself dwelling on Shakespere today.Quite a tangent to your post.I had a very interesting thought.That Queen Elizabeth 1 was writing this stuff under a Nom de Plume.To have such insight into life, love,and the roles of Kings.You have to live this position to be able to write of it.Also the means to finance production.To lead is no small task.There is a loneliness of being apart.A distance required to remain objective.The sadness and loneliness of a personal desire to be included and not seen as different,that will never be reconciled.It takes a well trained,strongly motivated person not to be begiled by this privilege.To have the balance of true family life with all it's ups and downs 'grounds' the life of a spiritual leader.Family first,job second is always the best decider when a conflict of interests comes up...When it does.Loving your Blog.Pax

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